Hate crimes
In both crime and law, hate crime (also known as bias-motivated crime) is a usually violent, prejudice motivated crime that occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a certain social group. Examples of such groups include but are not limited to: ethnicity, gender identity, language, nationality, physical appearance, religion, or sexual orientation.Stotzer, R.: "Comparison of Hate Crime Rates Across Protected and Unprotected Groups", Williams Institute, 2007–06. Retrieved on 2012-03-17. "A hate crime or bias motivated crime occurs when the perpetrator of the crime intentionally selects the victim because of his or her membership in a certain group."Streissguth, Tom (2003). Hate Crimes (Library in a Book), p.3. ISBN 0-8160-4879-7. "Hate crime" generally refers to criminal acts that are seen to have been motivated by bias against one or more of the types above, or of their derivatives. Incidents may involve physical assault, damage to property, bullying, harassment, verbal abuse or insults, or offensive graffiti or letters (hate mail).Hate crime, Home Office A hate crime law is a law intended to deter bias-motivated violence. Hate crime laws are distinct from laws against hate speech in that hate crime laws enhance the penalties associated with conduct that is already criminal under other laws, while hate speech laws criminalize a category of speech. History The term "hate crime" came into common use after World War II and the end of most major government-sanctioned racial cleansing, but the term is often used retrospectively about events occurring prior to that. Examples include pogroms against Jews and the Armenian genocide. Concern about hate crimes has become increasingly prominent among policymakers in many nations and at all levels of government in recent years. There have been many examples throughout modern-day Europe by groups who harass and threaten many different racial groups. In the United States, racial and religious biases have inspired most hate crimes. of African American men on June 15, 1920]] The verb "to lynch" is sometimes attributed to the actions of Charles Lynch, an 18th-century Virginia Quaker. Lynch, other militia officers, and justices of the peace rounded up Tories sympathizers who were given a summary trial at an informal court; sentences handed down included whipping, property seizure, coerced pledges of allegiance, and conscription into the military. Originally the term referred to organized but unauthorized punishment of criminals. It later evolved to describe execution outside of "ordinary justice" and is associated with weak or nonexistent police authority, like in the Old West, and racism. Experts continue to debate the origin of the term. As Europeans began to colonize the world from the 16th century onward, indigenous peoples in the colonized areas, such as the Native Americans increasingly became the targets of bias-motivated intimidation and violence.Fred Fausz, "Jamestown at 400: Caught Between a Rock and a Slippery Slope", History News Network, George Mason University, 7 May 2007 During the past two centuries, some of the more typical examples of hate crimes in the U.S. include lynchings of African Americans, cross burnings to drive black families from predominantly white neighborhoods, assaults on white people traveling in predominantly black neighborhoods, assaults on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, the painting of swastikas on Jewish synagogues and xenophobic responses to a variety of minority ethnic groups. Examples like the murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom and the Wichita Massacre tend not to be classified as "hate crimes" by U.S. investigative officials, but they have meanwhile been described as "hate crimes against whites by blacks" by Conservative commentators such as David Horowitz (a conservative author and academic), Michelle Malkin (a commentator for the Fox News channel and a prolific conservative author) and Stuart Taylor, Jr. (journalist)."'Hate Crimes' and Double Standards" By Stuart Taylor, Jr. The Atlantic. May 29, 2007. The district attorneys in both these cases have specifically stated that while these incidents were indeed horrible, and had tremendous impacts on the communities affected by them, neither displayed evidence of being black-on-white racism, either upon initial or more in-depth review.